In mapping the now indispensable document for international travel—the passport— the project excavates its complex modern manifestations. Its import may appear to be intuitive, but betrays a multifaceted undergirding that demands unpacking, meaningful articulation and theorising. I critically examine discourses that circulate in legal, political, philosophical, and literary domains. It is then divided in sections that analyse the passport in terms of its truncated history, its ‘value’, and both the gains and limits of seeing it as an ‘object’.
The theoretical frameworks and methodologies deployed are innovative in that they draw eclectically from various disciplines. The project relies on archival work, textual studies, legal parameters and law-making, Hansard, government reports, international media accounts, fiction and cinematic representations. Historically it ranges from the issue of the Emigration passes to indentured labourers between 1838-1917, to the refugee crisis between the wars, and apartheid-era pass laws, which required black South Africans and other non-white people to carry a dompas.
In probing the complex tension of border-ing and technology of the passport, I treat these paradoxical sites where something champions its identity, but also ceases being what it is. The passport’s circulation is newly conceptualised in what I call ‘object-space’ and ‘value-space’.